Dentists, physicians, and veterinarians are asking the Federal Trade Commission to exclude healthcare professionals from regulations designed to mitigate the risks of identity theft. I say: Step up and protect your customers from identity theft.

I want to respond to a few comments/suggestions I received about my recent Intelligent Enterprise story, Breakthrough Analysis: Two + Nine Types of Semantic Search. Jim Hendler suggested a semantic-search approach I'd missed, "real-time search with some sort of filtering." I'll tackle that and points raised by NLP/semantics researcher Tom O'Hara...

January 2010 won't go quietly, nor will Techweb's Chief Content Officer, David Berlind and I in our second podcast version of The Fritz & David Show where we give some of our final thoughts no the Apple iPad, and summarize the announcements coming from Oracle this week.

A Dallas-based IT services firm with 500 employees is looking to add 100 new jobs this year to support its growing business in managed IT services, applications development, project management, and infrastructure services. About half of the new jobs are based in Dallas while others will be spread around the U.S.

Heaven forbid we actually have to dial a phone number any more. That would be awful. Google is saving smartphone owners, once again, from exercising their thumbs by adding a click-to-call feature directly in mobile ads.

Those who jumped on the Android bandwagon early by purchasing the HTC Magic when it hit store shelves in mid-2009 take heed. HTC has made a new version of the system software available for the Magic, and it includes HTC's Sense user interface.

Motorola is predicted to become the leading supplier of Android devices, pushing HTC to the number two spot. Motorola got real serious with Android with the launch of the Verizon based Droid and it looks like that is paying off.

Now that we've all found out what Apple has had up its sleeve all these months, we can start to assess the iPad's usefulness for business more confidently. At least one possible use case is clearly out the window -- at least for now -- but the demo introduced one no one had thought about.

Good grief. Yesterday's breathless blogging would have you thinking the technology world has been changed forever with the new Apple iPad. So let me go on the record with a contrarian viewpoint. The iPad seems like an interesting device, but I can't see where it fits into most personal or business IT needs.

Customer review and survey service RatePoint claims that businesses who use its online testimonial services can resolve 90 percent of customer disputes before they turn into negative reviews. That's one of several pieces of advice the company offers small businesses trying to manage their online reputations.

Making a huge commitment to Sun's viability and value, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said Sun will become profitable next month and will remain in the black thereafter. Setting up that unexpected promise, Ellison said, "So we're hiring, not firing. We're not cutting Sun to profitability, we're growing Sun to profitability."

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison served notice on competitors yesterday but saved his toughest talk for the UBS investment analyst who recently floated the rumor that Oracle would dismiss more than 13,000 Sun employees, or half its total workforce. Ellison called that claim "garbage" that was "highly irresponsible" and then set the record straight: Oracle will be adding employees.

"We are on the verge of a new era that will result in a new class of applications that will change the way we think about our business," says MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor. That era will be driven largely by mobile... Yes, mobile.

I chatted recently with a number of vendors about service level agreements (SLAs) and cloud computing. Perhaps the quote from these conversations that resonated with me most was, "your dad's SLAs won't cover the use cases for cloud." And, it's true. I joke around that cloud computing is just renamed Internet computing or network computing, but when you start adding in the factors surrounding cloud, it's pretty obvious that Dad's role in cloud SLAs is as an advisor, not implementor.

Apple is ruthless with its product pricing. It charges the maximum price it can get for a given product...and still leaves out essential ingredients, forcing customers to buy over-priced accessories. The iPad is no different.

One of the more surprising elements of Apple's iPad launch event was news that the company is sticking with its long-time wireless network partner, AT&T. Was that the right move? Can AT&T handle the iPad in addition to the iPhone?

This morning Verizon Wireless announced a new music-focused service specifically for BlackBerry users. Despite offering 1,000 songs on a microSD card, the service is clearly meant to coax BlackBerry users to download more music from Verizon's V CAST Music Store. Updated.

To learn more about what organizations are doing to tackle attacks and threats we surveyed a group of 300 IT and infosec professionals to find out what their biggest IT security challenges are and what they're doing to defend against today's threats. Download the report to see what they're saying.

Is DevOps helping organizations reduce costs and time-to-market for software releases? What's getting in the way of DevOps adoption? Find out in this InformationWeek and Interop ITX infographic on the state of DevOps in 2017.

Chances are your organization is adopting cloud computing in one way or another -- or in multiple ways. Understanding the skills you need and how cloud affects IT operations and networking will help you adapt.